Babu Jagjivan Ram popularly known as Babuji, was a freedom fighter and a social reformer hailing from Bihar in India and Nation pays homage to this great leader on 5th April which is his 106th birth anniversary.
He was instrumental in foundation of the ‘All-India Depressed Classes League’, an organisation dedicated to attaining equality for untouchables, in 1935 and was elected to Bihar Legislative Assembly in 1937, that is when he organised, rural labour movement.
He was a loyal follower of Mahatma Gandhi and his philosophy of peace and non-violence.
But as a student he indulged in violence of sorts at least once, that was in later years approved and even applauded by the Mahatma.
Jagjivan Ram was born at Chandwa near Arrah in Bihar in 1908. He went to Aggrawal Middle School in Arrah in 1920 at the age of 12, where the medium of instruction was English. Soon he came face to face with caste discrimination.
Jagjivan Ram proved his mettle on his own and rose to be the nation’s Deputy Prime Minister.
He still holds a record as a minister without a break for as many as 34 years.
He became, at 38, the youngest minister in Jawaharlal Nehru’s provisional government in 1946.
He was also a member of the Constituent Assembly of India, where he ensured that social justice was enshrined in the Constitution.
Babuji, as he was popularly known, made his legislative debut at the age of 29, in 1937, as a member of the Bihar Legislative assembly.
This was the time when popular rule was introduced under the 1935 Act and the scheduled castes were given representation in the legislatures.
He chose to go with the nationalists and joined the Congress.His ministerial tenures in independent India proved momentous.
He was Defence Minister during the Indo-Pak war of 1971 that ended in the liberation of erstwhile East Pakistan into an independent Bangladesh.
His ministerial innings came to an end in 1980 when he was in the Janata Party government of Prime Minister Morarji Desai.